LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 

A Talk to Freshmen 

by 

A. LAWRENCE LOWELL 



LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 

A Talk to Freshmen 



An Address Delivered to the Freshman Class of Yale College 

October 15th, 1915, on the Ralph Hill Thomas 

Memorial Lectxu"eship Foundation 



BY 

A. LAWRENCE LOWELL 

President of Harvard University 




NEW HAVEN 

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

MDCCCCXVI 






Copyright, 1916 
By Yale University Press 



First Published, July, 1916 



it 



ISyA 



AUG II 1916 



©CI.A438033 



LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 
By A. Lawrence Lowell 

WE are living in the midst of a terrific war in which 
each side casts upon the other the blame for causing 
the struggle; but in which each gives the same reason 
for continuing it to the bitter end — that reason being the 
preservation from destruction of the essential principle of its 
own civilization. One side claims to be fighting for the 
liberty of man; the other for a social system based on 
efficiency and maintained by discipline. Of course the 
difference is one of degree. No one believes in permitting 
every man to do whatever he pleases, no matter how it may 
injure his neighbor or endanger the community; and no 
country refuses all freedom of action to the individual. But 
although the difference is only of degree and of emphasis, it 
is none the less real. Our own people have always asserted 
their devotion to the principle of personal liberty, and in 
some ways they have carried it farther than any other nation. 
It is not, therefore, useless to compare the two principles that 
we may understand their relative advantages, and perceive 
the dangers of liberty and the conditions of its fruitfulness. 
Americans are more familiar with the benefits of discipline 
in fact, than conscious of them in theory. Anyone who should 
try to manage a factory, a bank, a railroad, a ship, a military 
company, or an athletic team, on the principle of having 
every employee or member of the organization take what- 
ever part in the work, and do it in whatever way seemed best 
in his own eyes, would come to sudden grief and be merci- 
lessly laughed at. We all know that any enterprise can be 
successful only if there is co-ordination of effort, or what 
for short we call team play ; and that this can happen only if 
the nature of each man's work, and the way he is to perform 



4 LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 

it, is arranged with a view to the whole, so that each part 
fitting into its place contributes its proper share to the total 
result. Experience has taught us that the maximum effi- 
ciency is attained where the team play is most nearly perfect, 
and therefore the subordination of the individual to the 
combined action is most nearly complete. Then there is the 
greatest harmony of action, and the least waste by friction or 
working at cross purposes. But everyone is aware that such 
a condition does not come about of itself. Men do not fit 
into their places in a team or organization spontaneously. 
Until they have become experts they do not appreciate the 
relation of their particular work to the plan as a whole ; and 
even when they have become familiar with the game or the 
industry, they are apt to overestimate their own part in it, or 
disagree about the best method of attaining the result. 
Everyone likes to rule, and when Artemus Ward suggested 
that all the men in a regiment should be made Brigadier 
Generals at once to avoid jealousy, he touched a familiar 
weakness in human nature. He was not obliged to explain 
the joke, because no one fails to see the absurdity of having 
everybody in command. But that would be exactly the 
situation if nobody were in command. If there is to be a 
plan for combined action, somebody must have power to 
decide what that plan shall be ; and if the part of every per- 
former is to be subordinated to the common plan, somebody 
must have authority to direct the action of each in conformity 
with the plan. Moreover, that authority must have some 
means of carrying its directions into effect. It must be 
maintained by discipline ; either by forcing those who do not 
play their parts rightly to conform to the general plan, or 
by eliminating them from the organization. 

This principle of co-ordinated effort maintained by disci- 
pline applies to every combination of men where the 
maximum efficiency for a concrete object is desired, be it a 
business, a charity, or a whole state. It is a vitally important 
principle which no people can afford to lose from sight, but 



LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 5 

it is not everything. Whether it conduces to the greatest 
happiness or not is a question I leave on one side, for I am 
now discussing only effectiveness. Yet even from that 
standpoint we have left something out of account. The 
principle would be absolutely true if men were machines, or 
if the thing desired were always a concrete object to be 
attained by co-operation, such as the building of a railroad, 
the production of wealth, the winning of victory in war or 
on a playing field. But men are human beings and the 
progress of civilization is a thing far too complex to be com- 
prised within any one concrete object or any number of such 
objects depending on combined effort. This is where the 
advantages of liberty come in. 

Pasteur, one of the greatest explorers of nature and bene- 
factors of the age, remarked that the value of liberty lay in 
its enabling every man to put forth his utmost effort. In 
France under the ancient monarchy men were very nearly 
born to trades and professions, or at least large portions of 
the people were virtually excluded from many occupations. 
The posts of officers in the army were generally reserved for 
men of noble rank. The places of judges were purchased, 
and were in fact largely hereditary, and so on through much 
of the higher grade of employments. The Revolution broke 
this system down, and Napoleon insisted that the true prin- 
ciple of the French Revolution was the opening of all careers 
to talent ; not so much equality as freedom of opportunity. 
Under any system of compulsion or restraint a man may be 
limited to duties unsuited to his qualities, so that he cannot 
use the best talents he possesses. The opportunities in a 
complex modern civilization are of infinite variety, subtle, 
elastic, incapable of being compassed by fixed regulations for 
attaining definite objects. The best plan for perfecting the 
post office, if strictly followed, would not have produced the 
telegraph; the most excellent organization of the telegraph 
would not have created the telephone; the most elaborate 
system of telephone wires and switchboards would not have 



6 LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 

included the wireless. The greatest contributions to knowl- 
edge, to the industrial arts, and to the comforts of life have 
been unforeseen, and have often come in unexpected direc- 
tions. The production of these required something more 
than a highly efficient organization maintained by discipline. 

Moreover — what is nearer to our present purpose — 
believers in the principle of liberty assert that a man will put 
forth more effort, and more intelligent effort, if he chooses 
his own field, and works in his own way, than if he labors 
under the constant direction of others. The mere sense of 
freedom is stimulating in a high degree to vigorous natures. 
The man who directs himself is responsible for the conse- 
quences. He guarantees the result, and stakes his character 
and reputation on it. If after selecting his own career he 
finds that he has chosen wrongly, he writes himself down a 
fool. The theory of liberty, then, is based upon the belief 
that a man is usually a better judge of his own aptitudes than 
anyone else can be, and that he will put forth more and 
better effort if he is free than if he is not. 

Both these principles, of discipline and of liberty, contain 
much truth. Neither is absolutely true, nor can be carried to 
its logical extreme, for one by subjecting all a man's actions 
to the control of a master would lead to slavery, the other 
by leaving every man free to disregard the common welfare 
would lead to anarchy. In America we are committed, as it 
were, to err on the side of liberty; and it is my purpose to 
consider here what are the dangers and conditions of liberty 
in the American coUege. It is in college that young 
men first enjoy the pleasure of liberty and assume its respon- 
sibilities. They sometimes think themselves still under no 
little restriction, because they cannot leave the college during 
term time without permission, and must attend the lectures, 
examinations, and other duties ; but these are slight compared 
with the restraints which will surround any busy man in after 
life. There is no better place than college to learn to use 
freedom without abusing it. This is one of the greatest 



LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 7 

opportunities of college life, the thing that makes strong men 
stronger and sometimes weak men weaker than before. 

Liberty means a freedom of choice in regulating one's con- 
duct. If you are free to attend a lecture, but not free to 
stay away from it, then it is compulsory. You have no 
liberty whatever in the matter. A man of wealth has no 
freedom about paying taxes. He is obliged to pay them. 
But he has freedom about giving money away to relieve 
distress, or for other charitable purposes, because he may 
give or not as he pleases. A man is at liberty to be generous 
or mean, to be kindly or selfish, to be truthful or tricky, to be 
industrious or lazy. In all these things his duty may be 
clear, but he is free to disregard it. In short, liberty means 
freedom to do wrong as well as to do right, else it is no 
freedom at all. It means freedom to be foolish as well as to 
be wise, to prefer immediate self-indulgence to future benefit 
for oneself or others, liberty to neglect as well as to perform 
the duties of the passing hour that never comes again. But 
if liberty were used exclusively to do wrong, it would be 
intolerable, and good sense would sweep it from the earth. 
The supposition on which liberty is based, the condition on 
which it exists, is that men will use it for right more than 
for wrong; that in the long run they will do right more 
often, and do more that is good, than under a system 
of restraint.. 

Mark this, liberty and discipline are not mutually exclusive. 
Liberty does not mean that good results can ever be attained 
without discipline. If rightly used it means only that regu- 
lation by others is replaced by self-discipline no less severe 
and inexorable. The man who does not force himself to 
work when he is disinclined to do so will never achieve any- 
thing worth doing. Some really industrious men affect to 
do only what they like, never working save when the spirit 
moves them; and occasionally such men deceive themselves 
in trying to deceive others. If not, they have usually 
schooled themselves to want what they ought to want. Self- 



8 LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 

discipline has brought their inclinations as well as their con- 
duct iiito a happy subjection to their will. But, in fact, labor 
carried anjrwhere near the point of maximum productivity, 
the^oint where a man puts forth his utmost effort, is never 
wholly pleasurable, although the moral force required to 
dfive oneself at top speed varies much in different people. 
An idle disposition, however, is no sufficient excuse for shirk- 
ing. Many years ago a stingy old merchant in Boston lay 
dying. The old miser turned to the brother sitting by his 
bedside and said: "John, I wish I had been more generous 
in giving away money in my life. But it has been harder for 
me than for most men to give money; and, John, I think the 
Lord will make allowance for differences in temperament." 
Thus do we excuse ourselves for self-indulgence. 

How many men in every American college make an effort 
to get through with little to spare, win a degree, and evade an 
education? Not an insignificant number. How many 
strive earnestly to put forth their utmost effort to obtain an 
education that will develop their intellectual powers to the 
fullest extent, and fit them in the highest possible degree to 
cope with the problems they will face as men and as citizens? 
Again not an insignificant number, but are they enough to 
satisfy Pasteur's aspirations, or even to justify his idea of 
the object of liberty? 

Everywhere in the higher education of Europe, whether 
the system is one of freedom or restraint, whether as in 
Germany a degree is conferred only on men who have real 
proficiency, or as in Oxford and Cambridge a mere pass 
degree is given for very little real work, everywhere the 
principle of competition is dominant for those who propose 
to make a marked success in life. Let us take the countries 
which claim to be fighting in this war for liberty. A student 
at Oxford or Cambridge knows that his prospects, not only 
of a position in the university, but at the bar, in permanent 
public employment and political life, are deeply influenced 
by, and in many cases almost dependent upon, his winning a 



LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 9 

place in the first group of scholars at graduation. The man 
who gets it plays thereafter with loaded dice. It gives him 
a marked advantage at the start, and to some extent follows 
him ever afterwards. Of course, there are exceptional men 
who by ability come to the front rank without it, but on the 
whole they are surprisingly few. Mr. Balfour is sometimes 
referred to as a man who did not distinguish himself at 
Cambridge, and Sir Edward Grey is said to have been an 
incorrigibly poor scholar at Balliol in Oxford, yet both of 
them won third-class honors, which is not far from what we 
should consider <I> B K rank. To mention only men who 
have been prominent in public life. Peel, Cardwell, Sher- 
brooke, Gladstone, Harcourt, Bryce, Trevelyan, Asquith, 
Haldane, Milner, Simon, Ambassador Spring-Rice, and 
many more won honors of the first class at one of the two 
great English universities; while a number of other men 
distinguished in public life, such as Disraeli, Chamberlain, 
and Lloyd- George, did not go to Oxford or Cambridge. It 
would not be difficult to add a long list of judges, and in fact, 
as an Oxford man once remarked to me, high honors at the 
university have been almost a necessity for reaching the 
bench. No doubt the fact that men have achieved distinction 
at their universities is a test of their ability; but also the 
fact that they have done so is a direct help at the outset of 
their careers. 

If we turn to France we find the same principle of compe- 
tition in a direct form though working in other channels. 
The Ecole Centrales the great school of engineering, and 
the Beaux Arts, the great school of architecture and art, 
admit only a limited number of students by competitive 
examination ; and the men who obtain the highest prizes at 
graduation are guaranteed public emploj^^ment for life. 
Europeans believe that pre-eminence in those things for 
which higher education exists is a measure of intellectual and 
moral qualities; and the fact that it is recognized as such 
tends to make it so, for the rewards attached to it make 



10 LIBERTY 4ND DISCIPLINE 

ambitious and capable young men strive for it, and put forth 
their utmost effort in the competition. Let us hope that 
some day our colleges, and the public at large, will recognize 
more fully than they do to-day the value of excellence in 
college work as a measure of capacity, as a promise of future 
achievement, and thereby draw out more effort among the 
undergraduates. It is already the case to a large extent in 
our professional schools, and ought to be the case in our 
colleges, if a college education is really worth the money and 
labor expended on it. 

At present the college is scholastically democratic. The 
world rarely asks how a man got in, or how he graduated. 
It is enough that he did graduate somehow. Bachelor 
degrees, whether indicating high scholarship or a minimum 
of work, are treated by the public as free and equal; and 
what is worse they are far too much so treated by the colleges 
and universities themselves. Now, the requirement for a 
college degree cannot be more than a minimum, and in the 
nature of things a rather low minimum, requiring on the 
part of men with more than ordinary ability a very small 
amount of work; far less than is needed to call forth their 
utmost effort. 

This is one of many illustrations of the well-known fact 
that education moves slowly, and follows rather than leads 
the spirit of the time. We live in a strenuous age, a time 
of activity and energy. I think it was Bagehot who 
remarked that the change of habits was evident even in the 
casual greeting of friends. He says that we ask a man 
whom we have not met for some time, "What have you been 
doing since I saw you last?" as if we expected him to have 
been doing something. I remember some time ago reading 
a story in a magazine about travellers in a railroad train, who 
were stopped at a custom house to have their baggage exam- 
ined, and found that, instead of holding clothes, their bags 
and trunks contained the works they had done in life. It 
was the last judgment, and several well-meaning persons 



LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 11 

found their many pieces of luggage sadly empty. A gen- 
tleman among the number came forward to explain that 
they had supposed their duty to consist in avoiding sin, and 
they had done so ; that their lives had been spent in pleasures, 
for the most part wholly innocent, and that this was all they 
had understood to be required of them. 

The story illustrates a change of attitude which has come 
over the world, and men who have passed fifty have seen it 
come in, comparing the generation that went before them 
with that which has followed them. Thou shalt is quite as 
important as thou shalt not. Professor Munro in speaking 
in a college chapel some time ago on the importance of 
positive as well as negative morality remarked that most 
people if asked the meaning of the fourth commandment 
would think only of its forbidding work on Sunday; whereas 
its opening words are "Six days shalt thou labor." We live 
not only in a strenuous world, but in the most strenuous part 
of the world. Innocent leisure is no longer quite respectable 
here, except in college ; and it is getting not to be respectable 
there — except in study. 

Most of us feel that the American college is a very 
precious thing. It is a clean and healthy place, morally, 
intellectually, and physically. I believe that no large body 
of young men anywhere in the world live on the whole such 
clean lives, or are cleaner or more honorable in thought. 
The college is a place where a man may, and where many a 
man does, develop his character and his mental force to an 
almost indefinite extent; where he may, and often does, 
acquire an inspiration that sustains him through life ; where 
he is surrounded by influences that fit him, if he will follow 
them, for all that is best in the citizen of a republic. The 
chief defect in the American college to-day is that it has not 
yet been stirred by the strenuous spirit of the age, the spirit 
that dignifies the principle of liberty; or at least it has been 
stirred mainly in the line of what are called student activities. 
These are excellent things in themselves, to be encouraged in 



12 LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 

full measure, but they do not make up for indolence and lack 
of effort in the studies which are, after all, the justification 
for the existence of the college. Let us put this matter per- 
fectly plainly. The good sense of the community would 
never approve of having young men devote the whole of 
their best four years to the playing field, or to those other 
accessories of college life, the management of athletic or 
other organizations, or viriting for college papers. These, 
as I have said, are excellent as accessories, but if they were 
the whole thing, if instruction and study were abolished, the 
college would soon be abolished also. What, then, in a land 
of restless activity and energy is likely to be the future of a 
college in which a large part of the undergraduates regard 
extra-curriculum activities as the main interest, and edu- 
cation as an accessory; and where a smaller, but not incon- 
siderable fraction regard all activity as irksome? If our 
young men cannot answer that question themselves, let them 
ask some man who is not himself a college graduate but has 
worked his way up in the world by his diligence, perseverance, 
pluck, and force of character. 

The danger that under a system of liberty men will fail 
to put forth their utmost effort lies not merely, or perhaps 
mainly, in a lack of moral force. It is due quite as much to 
a lack of moral and intellectual vision, an inability to see any 
valuable result to be accomplished by the effort. This is 
particularly true in college. JNIany a man who intends to 
work hard thereafter in his profession or business, tries to get 
through college with a small amount of study. He is fully 
aware that in his future career he will make no use of a 
knowledge of the force of the Greek aorist, of the properties 
of a regular parallelepipedon, or of the effect of the reign 
of Edward the First on English constitutional history; and 
hence he is inclined to think these things of no great practical 
consequence to him. In no form of human productivity of 
far-reaching importance is the direct practical utility of 
every step in the process visible to the man who takes it. 



LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 13 

The workman in a factory may not know why he mixes 
certain ingredients in prescribed proportions, why he heats 
the mixture to a certain temperature, or why he cools it 
slowly. It might be difficult to explain it to him; and he 
does these things because they are ordered by the boss. 

The difficulty of perceiving the connection between the 
means and the end is greater in the case of education, as 
distinguished from mechanical training, than in almost any- 
thing else, because the processes are more subtle, more intan- 
gible, less capable of accurate analysis. In fact the raw 
material that is being worked up is not the subject matter 
of the work but the mind of the worker himself; and the 
effect on his mind is not from day to day perceptible. His 
immediate task is to learn something, and he asks himself 
whether it is really worth learning; whereas the knowledge 
he acquires is not of the first importance, the vital question 
being how much he has improved in the ability to acquire 
and use it. At school the process is equally obscure, but the 
boy learns his lessons because he is obliged to do so. If he 
is a good boy he learns them well, because, although blind to 
the meaning of it all, he knows it is his duty. He does not 
seek to understand the process ; and I recall now with amuse- 
ment the ridiculous attempts we sometimes made in our 
school days to explain to our girl friends why it was worth 
while to study Latin. Many a boy who has ranked high at 
school, without asking himself the use of studying at all, does 
little work in college, because he asks himself why he should 
make the effort and cannot answer the question. The con- 
trast illustrates the difference between a system of discipline 
and one of liberty. In both the relation of the work of the 
day and the result to be attained is invisible, but the motive 
power is not the same. 

Under a system of external discipline the motive power is 
supplied by the habit of obedience, enforced where necessary 
by penalties. For the good man the habit or duty of blind 
obedience is enough. As Colonel Mudge expressed it when 



14 LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 

he received a mistaken order to charge and sprang forward 
to lead his regiment at Gettysburg, "It is murder, but it is 
the order." Some of the greatest examples of heroism in 
human history have been given in this way. Eut blind 
obedience cannot be the motive power where liberty applies, 
and a man must determine his own conduct for himself. In 
the vast number of actions where the direct utility of each 
step cannot be seen, he must act on general principles, on a 
conviction that the particular step is part of a long process 
which leads forward to the end. The motive power of 
liberty is faith. All great enterprises, all great lives, are 
built upon and sustained by an overmastering faith in 
something. 

Faith is based upon imagination which can conceive things 
the eye cannot behold. Young people are prone to think of 
imagination as fantastic, the creation by the mind of 
impossible forms and events, distortions of nature, or cari- 
catures of man. But it is a higher imagination which 
pictures invisible things as they are, or as they might really 
be. Historic imagination does not people the past with 
impossible beings doing senseless acts, but with living men 
who thought and acted as men do not think and act to-day, 
but actually did under conditions that have long passed 
away. The true reformer is not he who portrays an ideal 
commonwealth which could never be made to work, but the 
man whose imagination has such a grasp on the springs of 
human nature that he can foresee how people would really 
conduct themselves in conditions yet untried, and whose 
plans work out as he designed them. 

If faith is thus based upon imagination, its fruition 
requires a steadfastness of purpose that is not weakened by 
discouragements or turned aside by obstacles that shut out 
the view and cast dark shadows across the path. The 
doubter, who asks himself at every stage whether the imme- 
diate effort is really worth while, is lost. Prophesy 
confidently of him that he will never reach his goal. 



LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 15 

President Pritchett in a walking tour in Switzerland asked 
a mountaineer about the road to the place whither he was 
bound. The man replied that he had never been there, but 
he knew that was the path which led to it. Such is the 
pathway to the ventures of life. None of us has ever been 
over the road we intend to travel in the world. If we believe 
that the way we take leads to our destination we must follow 
it, not stopping or turning back because a curve in the moun- 
tain trail obscures the distant scene, or does not at the 
moment seem to lead in the right direction. We must go 
on in faith that every step along the road brings us nearer, 
and that the faster we walk the farther we shall go before 
night falls upon us. The man who does not feel any reason 
for effort because he cannot see the direct utility of the things 
he learns has no faith in a college education ; and if he has no 
faith in it he had better not waste time on it, but take up 
something else that he has faith in, or that is better suited to 
men of little faith. 

Every form of civilization is, not only at its inception and 
in critical times, but always and forever, on trial. If it 
proves less effective than others it will be eliminated, peace- 
fully or forcibly, by a gradual process of change or by a 
catastrophe. Now the test of a civilization based on liberty 
is the use men make of the liberty they enjoy, and it is a 
failure not only if men use it to do wrong, but also if they 
use it to do nothing, or as little as is possible to maintain 
themselves in personal comfort. This is true of our institu- 
tions as a whole and of the American college in particular. 
A student who has no sustaining faith in the education he can 
get there ; who will not practise the self-discipline needed to 
obtain it; who uses his liberty to put forth not his utmost, 
but the least possible, effort ; who uses it not to acquire, but 
to evade, a thorough education, fails to that extent in his 
duty to himself, to his college, to his country, and to the 
civilization he inherits. The man who uses his liberty to put 
forth his utmost effort in college and throughout his life, not 



16 LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 

only does his duty, but is helping to make freedom itself 
successful. He is working* for a great principle of human 
progress. He is fighting the battle of liberty and securing 
its victory in the civilization of mankind. 

Never have I been able to understand — and even less than 
ever in these terrible days, when young men, on whom the 
future shone bright with hope, sacrifice from a sense of duty 
their lives, the welfare of those dearest to them, and every- 
thing they care for — less than ever can I understand how 
any man can stand in safety on a hillside and watch the 
struggle of life in the plain below without longing to take 
part therein; how he can see the world pass by without a 
craving to make his mark, however small, on his day and 
(generation. Many a man who would be eager to join a 
deadly charge if his country were at war, lacks the insight 
or imagination to perceive that the warfare of civilization is 
waged not more upon the battlefield than in the workshop, 
at the desk, in the laboratory, and the library. We have 
learned in this stress of nations that men cannot fight without 
ammunition well made in abundance ; but we do not see that 
the crucial matter in civilization is the preparedness of young 
men for the work of the world ; not only an ample supply 
of the best material, but a product moulded on the best 
pattern, tempered and finished to the highest point of per- 
fection. Is this the ideal of a dreamer that cannot be 
realized ; or is it a vision which young men will see and turn 
to a virile faith? 



